Truth as a Lenten* Way of Life

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?”

Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14: 5-6).

One of the (many) privileges of serving as campus chaplain is that I hear literally hundreds of stories testifying to the ways in which the Redeemer community has been a blessing to people. Even so, there’s always a dark side to Christian community as well. Every Christian community that I’ve ever belonged to has also left people wounded.

Here are a few of the spoken and (more often) unspoken messages of wounding that I've observed (at Redeemer and elsewhere):

• "You're committed some pretty aweful behaviours in the past few years.  You'll never be fully accepted as a member of this Christian community."
• "Your denomination is OK, though just barely; but you do seem to be one of the better types from your background, so I think we can make room for you here."
• "Your handicapped child was too difficult to care for in our Sunday School; could you make alternate arrangements for her next time?"
• "Some day you'll understand why your view is unbiblical."
• "It's too bad your family has that struggle."

All such statements have one thing in common: they misunderstand the character of truth in the Christian life. They equate truth with a check-list of moral requirements and/or doctrinal statements. And then these lists are used to judge how acceptable each person is. Like me, you’ve likely experienced such “list-checking,” and, also like me, there’s a good chance you participated in such list-checking too.

But what happens when truth is not first of all a check-list but a person - a person named Jesus Christ?

What happens can be stated very simply: freedom happens. Truth misunderstood as check-lists puts people in prison: the person who is not quite acceptable is in the prison called “not good enough” and the person who uses the check-list is in the prison called “self-righteousness.” Both of these are constricting, dehumanizing places to live. Both pretend that the only way to the Father is through the check-list.

Thank God the check-list has been nailed to the cross! As we enter another season of Lent, the Good News is that Jesus forever puts such check-lists to death by declaring that HE is the only Way to the Father: the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Are you going to give up something for Lent? Why don't you give up the check-lists that you find yourself using to assess others and also give up the check-lists that you have allowed others to use in assessing you?

On this Lenten road, Jesus Christ who is the Truth will truly set us free.

(*Lent is the forty day period leading up to Easter during which Christians remember Christ’s road of suffering in a spirit of prayer, repentance and self- denial. It begins on Ash Wednesday, which was Feb. 17 this year.)